Ok, my wife had a little to drink after complaining that I was reading out of that magical tome, "The Thing Explainer". I brought up the Simple Writer on my laptop, and we were soon "translating" Clement Moore's "The Night Before Christmas". Here is what we ended up with. It is best (more mind/spirit crushing) to have the original poem at your side to compare and figure out how we ended up with this abomination. I challenge others to add to the Season's Spirit to share the pain with others.

It was the night before the Gift Giving Day and all through the house not a thing was moving not even a small creature.

The foot wear were all hung by the house smoke hole with care in hopes that that guy who brings gifts would soon be there.

The children were asleep all set in their beds, while dreams of sweet foods danced in their heads.

And mother and her night clothes hat and I in my hat had just settled our brains for a long winter's sleep.

When out on the grass there came such a noise I got up form my bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the window cover threw up the window hanging.

The moon on the breast of new fallen snow gave a light of middle day to everything below.

When what to my wondering eye should appear but a tiny snow car and eight tiny creatures.

With a little old driver so alive and fast I knew in a moment that it must be the guy who brings gifts.

More faster than birds that eat other creatures his eight tiny creatures they came and he sounded and shouted and called them by name:

Now Fast Runner, now Moves to music, now Walks happy, and Sex helper, on Fire ball, on Love god, on That other one, and Light strike.

To the top of the house front to the top of the wall, now run away run away run away all!

As dry leaves that before the wild big storm fly, when they meet with a thing in the way, goes up to the sky.

So up to the house top, his eight tiny creatures they flew with a snow car full of play things and the guy who brings gifts too.

And then in a second I heard on the roof, the happy feet going and rubbing of each creature's foot.

As I moved my head and was turning around down the smoke hole the guy with the gifts came suddenly.

He was dressed all in animal hair from his head to his foot and his clothes were not clean with burnt stuff.

A bag of fun things he had up on his back, and he looked like a guy who sells stuff just opening his bag.

His eyes how they looked bright, his face lines how happy, his cheeks were like roses, his nose like a small red thing from a tree that you can eat.

His funny little mouth was up like a turned stick, and the hair on his face was as white as the snow.

The small part of a thing that smokes was held hard in his teeth, and the smoke circled his head like a round leaf circle.

He had a wide face and a little round middle that shook when he laughed like a cup full of sweet stuff.

He was round and over-big a very happy old little person, and I laughed when I saw him even though I did not want to.

A quick close of his eye and a turn of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to fear.

He spoke not a word but when straight to his work, and filled all the foot wear then turned suddenly.

And putting his finger next to his nose and giving a nod up the house smoke hole he rose.

He ran to his snow car to his team gave a music noise, and away they all flew like the light stuff of a flower.

But I heard him say before they drove out of sight, "Happy Gift Giving Day to all, and to all a good night!"

My first thought was of one that would be easy. Apparently "snow" isn't allowed in my chosen simple-writer". Bob tail? Nope. And no slide/skid/etc to use for the banned "sleigh". Harder than anticipated.

Fast-going through the soft ground iceIn a one horse open over-ice car.Over the fields we go, Laughing all the way.Bells on behind horse hair ring,Making thoughts bright. What fun it is to laugh and make song noisesA over-ice car using song tonight.

Oh, ringing bells, ringing bells,ringing all the way.Oh, what fun it is to rideIn a one horse open over-ice car.(Repeat)

* The official xkcd one doesn't let me paste, which given it doesn't let me type spaces, is a big problem. Assume fault is with tablet on-screen keyboard.

ObsessoMom wrote:Isn't the "jingle" of "Jingle bells" an imperative verb rather than an adjective, Soupspoon? (Kinda like Bob Dylan's "Ring Them Bells," but less apocalyptic.)

Possibly, but I was burnt by the attempt to make "spirits" (abstract feelings, here of positive emotional value) end up as anything valud other than mere "thoughts".

To add to the mood*, here is another:

Silent night, god-brought night,All is calm, all is bright,Round that girl-like mother and child,God-brought baby, so soft and calm,Sleep in sky-god-home quiet,Sleep in sky-god-home quiet.

Some rather unsatisfactory replacements there. But the second line needed no touching up at all!

* I've worked out a way to use the xkcd simplewriter on this tablet! Put a comma after every word (making sure that Swiftkey is set to autoinsert a trailing space, even if I can't!) then go back and remove the unnecessary commas.

I don't yet understand OP's claim concerning usage of Simple Writer. In the main window of xkcd.com/simplewriter I wrote a sentence containing the words 'snow' and 'Mary'. 'snow' didn't get flagged. 'Mary' became red in the main window and appeared also in the lower window but I could continue writing words in the main window. BTW I have an OT question of ignorance: How (using which editor or software module) could one change the colour of an input word in the manner that Simple Writer does?

mok-kong shen wrote:'Mary' became red in the main window and appeared also in the lower window but I could continue writing words in the main window.

Seems to be the intended functionality. Type a missive of whatever length, see which words (singled out below) need replacing and do so, repeat until no more such denoted words appear.

BTW I have an OT question of ignorance: How (using which editor or software module) could one change the colour of an input word in the manner that Simple Writer does?

Any text editing mechanism that's more than just pure text and allows for WYSIWYG, really. What exact context are you asking about?

Spoiler:

All sorts of Visual IDEs tend to have a dynamically formatable text component (howeverso one initiates that formating). Usually supports RTF methods, in my experience, but maybe these days also 'native' HTML...?. Web pages themselves are scriptably changable in the main page canvas (this <input type="text"> kind of box can't be, but that's why Previews are there - forums like ProBoards instead use a constructed and scripted WYSIWYG editor if that's your chosen configuration). Notepad-style editors don't have formatting, Notepad++-style ones highlight colour only as an automated courtesy, and for control, persistance and portability of formatting your full featured WP is where you need to go.

My OT programming question was in detail: I like to know a text editor such that, whenever the user types in a word that is not in a given list of words specified by me, the editor will turn that word from fonts in black colour to red colour and how could I instruct the editor to perform in that way?

Ah, functionally the same, rather than merely able to copy the aesthetics. I did not pick up on that.

PM (about to be) sent, to save further OTicity.

OnTopic:

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day wrote:When the snowmansnow man brings the snow,Well he just might like to know, He's put a great big smile on somebody's face.If you jump into your bed, Quickly cover up your head,Don't you lock the doorsYou know that sweet Santa ClauseGift Father is on the way.

Well I wish it could be Christmas Gift Time everyday, When the kids start singing and the bandmusic-group begins to play.Oh I wish it could be Christmas Gift Time everyday,So let the bellschurch-ringers ring out for Christmas Gift Time.

Umm, that was just my hitting of the "Font colour"* and "s" buttons, above here, whilst retyping the text painstakingly typed into the XKCD SimpleWriter (with the problems I have already explained with that).

Spoiler:

No, I tell a lie, I remember now that I straight copypastaed the text from the lyrics site to here, may have adjusted the punctuation to personal preference, then painstakingly (word<comma-space>word<comma-space>...) SimpleWritered the lyrics by hand, deleted the superfluous commas (not actually necessary!) found the problems, edited them out, formatted said problems and replacements here in the edit window, enclosed it in a quote and put the source URL in as the quote source as courtesy, given that I'm not sure how international this most British of modern Christmas songs actually is.

That's because I'm still working off my tablet, maybe. Haven't actually been pursuing this on any full PC with my actual developer environments.

* Just noticed it's the English English spelling. Personal forum setting, or universal? Never mind, I'm happy enough.

If I interpret your post correctly, you don't know the mechanism of how Simple Writer works in its way of changing certain input words into red fronts. I should be grateful, if some other readers of this thread could help me to learn that mechanism.

mok-kong shen wrote:If I interpret your post correctly, you don't know the mechanism of how Simple Writer works in its way of changing certain input words into red fronts. I should be grateful, if some other readers of this thread could help me to learn that mechanism.

The xkcd simplewriter page seems to use the javascript ace code editor. This editor dynamically updates the contents of the html page as you type into a textarea input element. As far as I can tell the text you type is actually removed from the textarea and added to the page contents on the fly with the appropriate css classes applied to give it the right colours.